Freedom from the Inside
by lilpryde
Summary: Bellatrix Lestrange's last moments in Azkaban.


His name was Bert. Bertram Salibender, actually.

He marched down the dank, shadowed corridor, ignoring the moans and screams from the cells around him. The vermin assigned to this great institution had never concerned him until he was transferred into this ward. But he still felt safe in his gleaming white button-down and pleated navy pants. His new shoes even squeaked against the crumbling stone.

No, the residents of Azkaban did not make him wet his pants like so many of the other guards. Bert had lived through seven years of this place, seven bloody years of the same, dying bodies clawing at streaks of sunlight and lamenting the fall of their great master. None of them ruffled his feathers.

Except one.

It was her cell he was headed toward, her inedible lunch he was bound by the threat of unemployment to deliver. He stepped to her cell, careful to keep several feet between the tray and her door. She was on her knees, her fingers twisting at the cool metal of the bars, her hooded eyes turned up. Always waiting for him.

"My dearest, Bertram. How are you today, love?"

He had always wondered how Bellatrix Lestrange knew his real name. Azkaban gave them fakes for their own protection, but she had guessed it on the first day of his transfer to the high-security ward. She seemed to reserve all of her lucid moments for him.

"Fine, thank you." He always gave the same response as his shaking hands lowered the tray to the floor. He pushed it forward with the toe of his shiny shoe. Bellatrix walked her fingers toward the bowl of yellowish muck, bypassed it, and snatched the rotting apple to her chest.

"Wonderful to hear. Just wonderful. And the wife? How is Mrs. Bert?" So cheerful with him, charming even, as she brought the apple to her cracked and bleeding lips and took a dainty bite. Had she not been draped in a fraying, gray shift with her once luminous hair wilting around her shoulders and down her back, he would have thought her visiting the Queen for tea.

"Fine, thank you." This was the first time she had asked about his wife. Paranoia warred with his normal confidence. Bellatrix Lestrange shouldn't know about his wife, his life, and especially not his little girl. At the thought, her eyes swam in his direction, and her broken lips sneered at Bert in a wicked smile.

"Yes, yes, and what of the young one? Is she well, darling?" She tossed the apple behind her and pulled herself up the bars, sliding the once supple curves of her body along the cold metal in a hypnotic seduction. "What _is_ her name…"

Bertram's heart sped up as the mad woman alternated between biting on her bottom lip and blowing out puffs of rancid air, staring a hole into his frozen body. Then she stopped, her brows arching, and a smile slithered across her face.

"Shell…"

He fell to a knee, his body numb. The rules of his job were simple. You didn't discuss your real life with other employees and never, _never_, with the prisoners. Especially the dangerous lunatics in this ward. So, how did the most loony and deprived of them all know the name of his only child?

She swayed back and forth in time to music only she could hear, her eyes fixed on the kneeling Bertram. When she crooked a finger for him to come closer, he did. Her hands were fisted in his pristine shirt after one step. She whispered to him as she drew him closer.

"I see them in my dreams, your love and the little one. They dance and play and laugh and sing, as all the pretty girls do. You know? I had a young one of my own. She was small with hair that shined like the sun, but she made the most maddening shrieks." His chest touched the bars as she pressed her lips to his ear. "Her insides were warm and wet, perfumed with sin and dripping with blood."

Bert shoved her back and stumbled into the middle of the corridor. Bellatrix swung from the bars, her lips pursed and filthy forehead crinkled. "Or perhaps that was the kitten. Hmm…" And a giggle broke into a laugh that transformed into a cackle. It woke the others, and they pulled themselves from the shadows and reached past the bars toward Bertram Salibender as he clawed at his eyes to erase the image Bellatrix had painted.

He stood, rigid as a statue, his hand reaching for his wand as a demanding shush resonated from her cell. Her eyes darted up, down, back, forth. She looked past Bert, past the walls and the water around them, her eyes wide and glazed. Then she began to bounce on her toes and shake the bars. The look that shown from her sunken face was the most horrifying thing Bertram had ever seen.

Pure, impassioned, terrifying happiness.

"He comes for me." She was ripping the fabric from her body, raking her palms across her face in a pantomimed bath, brushing her bloodied fingernails through her ratted and disgusting black hair, all the while chanting 'he comes, he comes' in a crescendo of cackling, crackling energy.

But she paused to address Bert, lucidity returning, and her audience fell silent. "Do you know, Bert? What color are Shell's insides?" He drew his wand as the floor shook. A massive chunk of the ceiling fell not ten feet from him. Cold, so ice cold he would never again be warm, descended upon him as a swirling cloud of dementors appeared through the hole above. Bert pushed himself away from them, from Bellatrix, his back slamming into the bars as the dirty hands of the inmates held him, took his wand, and forced him to watch Bellatrix grip the bars of her cage with white knuckles, her eyes focused on the three figures in the center of the swarm.

Two wore masks but were as different in stature as two men could be. One tall, one short, the first exuding confidence, the other huddled and shivering. But it was the third that held Bellatrix's worshipful face. Bertram had heard stories about the Dark Lord, but he had never believed. Not until now.

His face was the pale white of the dead, his nose a pair of slits, and his eyes were a glowing, evil crimson as he surveyed the demolished corridor.

"My Lord. I knew. I felt it." Bellatrix was writhing her half naked body against the bars, bruising her skin with the force of her movements. The tall, masked man flicked his wand toward the witch, and her hair was cleaned, her lips were healed, and a flowing, corset-style dress was painted over her sunken figure. She hardly noticed the change, her arms reaching forward, her forehead pressed to the cold floor as she waited.

"Lucius," Bertram shuddered at the high-pitched hiss from Lord Voldemort. "Give my most faithful servant her wand." There was a distinct stiffening of the tall man's shoulders as he strode to the cell and tossed a wand inside. Even with the mask, the raised nose and disdained sniff were clear to all.

Bellatrix recovered her wand and held it with the hands of a lover, petting it and running her tongue along the textured wood. With a sigh of coming home, she held it to her side and looked not to the Dark Lord, but to Bertram Salibender. He could not hope to look away.

She began to scream, and as she screamed, her wand glowed a brilliant fuchsia. The walls shook, the bars rattled, the prisoners holding Bertram retreated into their darkened corners, and Lord Voldemort laughed. A high, joyous, maniacal sound that told the world that true evil was alive and well tonight.

Stones the size of mountains, hunks of metal debris, filthy bodies, lavatory bowls, drinking mugs, scurrying mice and their moldy dinners exploded from Bellatrix's raging spell, flying outward from her cell walls leaving nothing in their wake except two figures. A tall, snake-like man and a cowering Bertram.

They were protected from the blast, left behind to witness the first whiff of freedom Bellatrix Lestrange would take in almost fifteen years. Magic danced across her smile and down her arms, twinkled in her coal black eyes, and sparked from her long, perfect, black fingernails.

"My Perfect Lord." She knelt before Voldemort, kissing and nibbling his bare feet before her eyes snapped to Bert. "I will be along."

In a blur of black smoke, she was behind him, her nails ripping his once flawless shirt, her tongue snaking along his neck, and she pulled him into the squeezing tube of apparition until they touched down in a quaint family room. Sunny, yellow walls, mint carpet, and two lovely people. His family. A plump woman and their sweet Shell, not a day over seven.

It took three seconds for the lurid green spell to hit his wife, another two before his daughter began to cry, and still another five until Bertram Salibender started to scream. He continued to scream as his new warden showed him every inch of his beautiful daughter's insides. They were just as Bellatrix described.

A/N: Thank you for reading. Reviews are welcome. Check out my blog if you have a moment (link on profile page).


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